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Monday, December 13, 2010

There was an amusing debate on lewrockwell.com. Under pressure from the State, Amazon.com kicked Wikileaks off its servers. (Amazon.com lets people rent space on its servers. That's "Amazon Web Services".)

Some people are calling for a boycott of Amazon.com, in protest. Lewrockwell.com makes money off "Amazon affiliate links". They're advocating to not boycott Amazon.com. (If you put a link to Amazon.com on your website, and people click the link and later buy, then you get a commission.)

Someone pointed out "There are more people who would boycott Amazon.com for *NOT* kicking Wikileaks off their servers, than there are people who would boycott for censoring Wikileaks."

Amazon.com executives have an obligation to their shareholders. If they took a moral stand they might lose their business. It isn't worth antagonizing State terrorists. Amazon.com wouldn't be accused of "Hosting Wikileaks on their servers." State terrorists would find some other excuse. The laws are so vague that anyone could be accused of breaking them.

Suppose you boycott Amazon.com and buy from X instead, paying the same price or slightly more. The amount of taxes on the transaction is approximately the same. The State makes the same revenue, whether you buy from Amazon.com or from another State-licensed business. (Amazon.com has been helping people avoid sales taxes on transactions, exploiting a legal technicality.)

If you really want to hurt State parasites, you have to work off the books. If you work as an agorist, assuming a 50% income taxation rate, you're denying the State a huge chunk of your labor, even if you later buy from a State-licensed business.

Even better, as the agorist economy gets more sophisticated, there will be alternatives to Amazon.com. Now, you probably incur a financial loss or inconvenience if you boycott Amazon.com. An agorist store would have lower prices and higher quality, because they're bypassing all State taxes and regulations. If you work as an agorist and purchase goods from other agorists, then you're really hurting the State.

If you decide to boycott Amazon.com over Wikileaks, you aren't accomplishing much. As long as you work on-the-books as a wage slave, the State is stealing your labor. As long as you buy from a State-licensed business, State parasites get a cut of the transaction.

7 comments:

If you remember back in 2000/2001, the customer service representatives at Amazon.com in Seattle grouped together to complain about excessive hours and bad shift patterns.

In response Amazon.com fired a lot of customer service reps and moved some of the work out to India.

At the time there were accusations that Amazon.com was anti-union.

There are other accusations that Amazon.com treats employees like batteries i.e. sucks out all their energy and then dumps them.

Some groups have staff that regularly leave after 1 year.

The codebase was developed very quickly and Amazon.com got into a pattern of releasing new projects quickly and then having to expend a lot of energy fixing all the problems. What you see from the outside isn't necessarily what goes on in the inside.

Everyone knows the current "accusations" (if you can call them that, the accusations don't even seem to be detailed in writing yet i.e. just non-specific, non-detailed lawyer, media released dog dirt) are fake, but Julian is in prison. Not because there is any evidence against him, but because a man in a silly wig says because he is Johnny Foreigner he is a flight risk.

This seems a nasty, shyster lawyer trick.

If the corrupt people pursing Julian detailed their accusations, the case would go away as there is nothing. So these goons don't give any details - just jelly so it can be spun out a bit more.

This is a pity. If a judge makes bad decisions, the people should have the ability to vote him out.

If a prosecutor makes bad decisions (i.e. delaying for over a year so as the 6 month time limit on assault gets passed, so a policeman can get away with killing an innocent man) he should be voted out.

But these jokers still stay in office.

The useless politicians say they cannot interfere in the legal process and so the court system is not answerable to the people.

One way I've seen a lot of people use to avoid paying taxes is to downsize their life and live on less. Small, energy efficient house, public transportation. Even move to another country like Thailand and run a remote business from the beach there. All perfectly legal. Best way to avoid taxes is to be poor. But being poor is not bad if you prepare well.

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Personal Finance

For personal finance, my most frequently visited site is Yahoo Finance. Yahoo Finance has the best system for watching your stock quotes during the day. I also like the Motley Fool. Both of these websites encourage you to do independent thinking about finance.

My favorite discount online broker is Vanguard. They are not the cheapest commission-wise, but their customer service has been excellent. Plus, they give a high credit interest rate on the cash portion of your account.

Mises, Rothbard, and Austrian Economics

The school of "Austrian Economics" advocates credit-based money instead of debt-based money. There are two separate websites, www.mises.org and www.mises.net. These philosophies are a precursor to agorism. However, they still hold out false hope that the people who control the government can be convinced to switch to a fair monetary system. They fall short of the correct conclusion that government itself is the problem.

The Mises and Austrian school is still a pro-State theory of economics. They say "government should adopt a sound monetary policy instead of an unsound monetary policy". They fall short of the truth, which is "Who needs a government?"

Agorism and Anarcho-Capitalism

The primary source most commonly cited is agorism.info. Agorism.info has good introductory material, but I'm already looking for more advanced topics. I also found TOLFA interesting. The Molinari Institute has a lot of interesting links.

The source with the most advanced material on agorism is Kevin Carson's The Mutualist Blog.

This link on the History of Money has a lot of interesting bits on how bankers have controlled the world's money supply for hundreds of years or longer. Unlike most other sources, it is very short and to the point. However, their recommended solution falls short of true agorism.

Freedomain is another good read. He doesn't update his blog often, but he has a lot of good stuff posted in the past.

Kevin Carson's Mutualist Blog - This is a great source. He is tough to read at times, but his content is great. He's the best source on agorism I've seen. I like to take his topics and present them in simpler language. He updates his blog sporadically, but he has a lot of great content. It's also worth reading his other books and articles, which are available from his mutualist.org website. I also like the way Kevin Carson frequently links back to his favorite older posts. Kevin Carson's Shared Items is also worth reading; it's a list of posts from other blogs that he finds interesting.

Kung-Fu Monkey. This blog is written by someone who works as a writer in the entertainment industry, which explains the high quality of writing. He sounds like a closet agorist, although he hasn't specifically mentioned that philosophy. This post on the Extrapolated Everyday Bull**** Comparison has promoted Kung-Fu Monkey from my hitlist to my "read regularly" list.

Redpillguy's Blog - His blog is relatively new, so it's hard to judge. He doesn't really update his blog that often. On the other hand, he frequently cites my content, and that's certainly the sort of thing I appreciate.

Tranarchism is another new blog. It's too soon to judge the content. On the other hand, anyone who heavily cites my stuff can't be all bad. It's too infrequently updated.

Wally Conger's Blog is another good read. However, he really has two separate blogs mixed together. He has a lot of good stuff on agorism and libertarianism. However, he also likes to talk about his favorite movies and TV shows a lot.

Blog HitlistThere are blogs I'm currently evaluating to see if they're worth a regular read. I currently manage my hitlist through Google Reader.

Honorable Mention

These blogs have some interesting content, but they don't make it into my regular reading rotation. If they improved their content or improved their posting frequency, then they would be in my regular reading list. I check back occasionally, and on a slow day I might read them.

Bill Rempel - He talks about finance and trading. He really dislikes the Federal Reserve. I'm not sure if he's come all the way to agorism yet, but perhaps he can be coaxed. He's guilty of my #1 blog pet peeve: A PARTIAL RSS FEED!

Bored Zhwazi - Has some nice content, but it really isn't updated that often. It's worth checking back once every month or two.